Hungry for exposure, mid-major schools bow to TV and play any day of the week. On a four-day, four-game road trip, SI found that players, coaches and fans dislike the midweek disruption but will do what's needed to land a big-bowl payday

A Legacy of Speed

Throughout his sprinting career Lennox Miller, who died last week of cancer at age 58, always seemed to be overshadowed just a bit. At the 1968 Olympics, running for his native Jamaica, he won silver in the 100 meters, finishing behind Jim Hines, who set a world record. In '72 Miller took the bronze. Even when he set a world record--as part of USC's 4√ó110-yard relay team, in 1967--he wasn't the one people remembered; the third leg was run by one O.J. Simpson. But none of that mattered to Miller. "We were college kids who ran in our spare time for the love of it," he said last year.

In 1996--22 years after he began practicing dentistry in Pasadena--Miller could finally say he had accomplished something truly distinctive. His daughter Inger won a gold medal as part of the U.S. 400-meter relay team, making the Millers the first father-daughter combination to win Olympic track and field medals. Before she received her gold, Inger said she was eager to get a look at the medal that would complete the family's set. "I've seen a silver and a bronze," she said. "I think we'll put them together with my dad's."

COLOR PHOTO JERRY COOKE (MILLER)

LIKE FATHER.... Miller (left, with Inger in '99) won the family's second medal, in '72.

Before he became the premier postseason performer of his generation, the Patriots icon was a middling college quarterback who invited skepticism, even scorn, from fans and his coaches. That was all—and that was everything